The invention relates to a method of fabricating an integrated BiCMOS circuit including bipolar transistors and CMOS transistors on a substrate. In particular, the invention relates to a method comprising the step of forming an epitaxial layer including a silicon germanium sublayer. The invention further relates to an integrated BiCMOS circuit comprising an epitaxial layer with a silicon-germanium sublayer.
It is known to integrate bipolar devices with MOSFET devices on a substrate. Forming so-called BiCMOS circuits demands a complicated fabrication process with many steps, as fabrication steps performing base, emitter and collector of a bipolar transistor differ from fabrication steps for forming source, drain and gate of a MOSFET device.
It is further known to use silicon-germanium (SiGe) to improve the properties of bipolar transistors. Bipolar devices benefit especially from the lower band gap in silicon-germanium in comparison to silicon, which increases the electric field across the base junction and thus reduces the transit time.
Therefore, bipolar devices require the SiGe in the base region, which is typically in a depth of 50 to 100 nm of the base epitaxial layer.
MOS devices can also be improved by the use of SiGe. They benefit from the increased electron and hole mobility of SiGe with respect to Si. By integrating silicon-germanium into CMOS transistors, the area ratio between NMOS and PMOS structures becomes close to one. Standard designs like inverters can be much denser. The drive current is also increased. The current in MOS devices flows laterally on the surface of the bulk silicon. Therefore, MOS devices need silicon-germanium on the surface of an epitaxial channel layer.
If a BiCMOS circuit is required which combines high performance bipolar transistors including a silicon-germanium base with high performance CMOS transistors comprising a silicon-germanium channel, four different epitaxial layers are to be formed as the bipolar and the MOS devices require the SiGe layer in different depths. The resulting structure will have: an epitaxial layer for the P-doped base of an NPN bipolar transistor; an epitaxial layer for the N-base of a PNP transistor; an epitaxial layer for the P-channel of an NMOS transistor; and an epitaxial layer for the N-channel of a PMOS transistor. Every epitaxial layer demands several process steps such as, for example, masking, depositing, cleaning, etc.
There is a need to simplify the method of producing an integrated BiCMOS circuit while using the advantages of silicon-germanium for the bipolar transistors as well as for the CMOS transistors. There is also a need to reduce the number of necessary process steps.